I collected this..may be useful for you...

In this article, I will take you through a tour of invesment banking

and how to test applications associated with it. Since the topic is
very vast, I will take a small but important piece of it. I will cover
trading life cycle and sketch out key scenarios for the same.

What is Investment Banking
Investment banking is a term that describes the business of raising
the capital for companies and advising them on financing and
merger alternatives. It doesnt mean investing or banking. Its a
broader term that deals with capital and securities. Capital means
cash which a company needs for its growth and securities are the
bonds and stocks. Investment bank derives the cash by selling the
securities to the public investors. An investment bank can be divided
into front office, middle office and back office.
Why Investment Banking?
The investment banking industry finds its roots in the nineteenth
century. In that era, the security markets of Europe and America
were dominated by small partnership firms. All these firms had their
origins in the 18th century Atlantic trade of importing goods for
European manufacturing industry and exporting their finished
products.
Another fact was, the traders who operated in this environment
were pioneers and their legal difficulties were more complex due to
multiple jurisdictions involved. Also, the communication speed in
those times was no faster than the person himself who is sailing
between the shores of two continents which made it very difficult to
have close control over his operation in the other country. If these
merchants had had to rely upon the court-enforced contracts of
todays economics text books, they would have been unable to
operate. And hence they had to find alternative ways to make and
to enforce binding agreements. This gave rise to some extra-legal
modes of contracting and contract enforcement. Academic
economists and lawyers have become increasingly aware of the
importance to economic life of institutions that support this type of
arrangement. For example, recent research has demonstrated that
trading arrangements in medieval Europe were designed to support
private enforcement, and many trade agreements in the modern
diamond and cotton industries are also made outside the formal
legal system.
In short, we can make a statement that financial markets cannot
function effectively if agents with valuable information are unable
to sell it to those who require it. This problem is particularly acute
when new securities are issued, but it is also important at other
timeswhen one firm purchases another, for example, or when
loans to distressed corporations have to be renegotiated. Investment
banks add value in these situations by designing an environment
within which information will be produced, enforcing the private
laws that govern its exchange, and acting as intermediaries between
the investors and analysts who sell this information, and the
investors and corporate security issuers who purchase it. Hence we
can conclude that investment banks exist because they maintain an
information marketplace that facilitates information-sensitive
security transactions.

Functions of Investment Banking:
Investment banks have many functions to perform. Some of the most
important functions of investment banking are as follows:

IPOs: Investment Banks facilitate public and Private Corporations
Initial Public Offering known as IPO (issuing securities in the primary
market) by providing underwriting services. Other services include
acting as intermediaries in trading for clients and foreign exchange
management.
Investment management: Investment Bankers also provide advice to
investors to purchase, manage and trade various securities (shares,
bonds, etc.) and other assets (e.g. real estate). Investors may be
institutions (insurance companies, pension funds, corporations etc.)
or private investors. The investment management division of an
investment bank is divided into separate groups, namely, Private
Wealth Management and Private Client Services.
Boutiques: Small investment banking firms providing financial
services are called boutiques. These mainly specialize in trading
bonds, advising for mergers and acquisitions, providing technical
analysis etc.
Mergers and Acquisitions: Another major function of the investment
banking include mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and corporate
finance which involve subscribing investors to a security issuance,
coordinating with bidders, or negotiating with a merger target.
Structuring of Derivatives: This has been a relatively recent division
which involves highly technical and numerate employees working on
creating complex structured derivative products which typically
offer much greater margins and returns than underlying cash
securities.
Merchant banking is nothing but the private equity activity of
investment banks. Goldman Sachs Capital Partners and JPMorgan's
One Equity Partners are the current examples. (Note: Originally,
"merchant bank" was the British English term for an investment
bank.)
Research is another important function of an Investment bank which
reviews companies and writes reports about their prospects with
"buy" or "sell" ratings. Though this division does not generate direct
revenues, the information gathered or produced by them is used to
guide investors and in some cases for Mergers and Acquisitions.
Risk management is a continuously ongoing activity which involves
analyzing the market and credit risk that traders are taking onto the
balance sheet in conducting their daily trades, and setting limits on
the amount of capital that they are able to trade in order to prevent
'bad' trades having a detrimental effect to a desk overall.
Trading Life Cycle -
As we have seen, an investment bank provides services such as
trading of derivatives, fixed income instruments, foreign exchange,
commodities, and equity securities. Let's take tour of trading
module. The trade life cycle has below stages, each trade has to
undergo from the stages which are mentioned as below.
Order Indication
Order Management
Trade Execution
Clearing
Settlement
Before going in details about these stages of business cycle, first we
take a one glimpse of the complete trade flow which is in the below
figure:

Order Indication:
The purpose of this stage is to Placing an Order. At this stage it is
assumed that the research has already been made on the Investment
Decision by Investment Manager regarding to that what to buy or sell
and how much to buy or sell and at which prices. The decision on
what to buy depends on the investment objective and the existing
portfolio and its quality. Once the research and decision is made,
client places an order on the basis of the decision taken by
Investment manager. This order can be placed directly on the
exchange by client or he may take help from broker to place the
order. So we can classify the orders as below on the basis of how the
client places the order:
Order Management:
This is the second stage of Trade Life Cycle. The purpose of this
stage is to maintaining the order status, keep management of
client/ broker orders and order reporting. Once the order has been
placed/ executed successfully, it will appear in the Order
Management System with an Order status. And this is updated during
the life-cycle of the Order. The order status describes not only the
order's current state, but also determines what, if any, actions a
user can perform on the order.
Trade Execution:
Trade is a basic economic concept in which multiple parties
participating in the voluntary negotiation and then the exchange of
ones goods and services for desired goods and services that
someone else possesses. And Execution means the buy or sell of
particular good and services. So Trade Execution means the
completion of Buy or Sell Order of a Security for which multiple
parties are participating. In this stage, Client gives the account
information either while placing the order or after the trade
execution is done.
Order Types:
Limit - An order that is placed with a specific price mentioned in it.
For buying, price less than or equal to the mentioned price is valid,
for selling, price greater than or equal to is valid.
Market An order that is placed to be executed at price whatever is
available in the exchange at that point of time.
Stop/Stop Limit An order that is placed with a limit price and a
stop limit price. This order turns to Limit order once the prevailing
price in Exchange reaches the mentioned Stop Limit price.
Clearing
Determining the net effect of multiple payment orders
How much does each party owe or is owed?
Stands between the buyer and the seller as counterparty of both
contractual partners
Guarantees the fulfilment of all transactions Clearing House takes
the principal risk Settlement system:
Settlement is the sixth and last stage of Trade Life Cycle. Once the
open/close positions are updated in the Position Keeping System,
trade detail flows down to the Settlement system. Under this stage,
the Settlement system checks for a Give In or a Full Service trade
and also for Commission rates which are applicable for based on the
counterparty involved. Then calculated internally, generated
commission rates and some certain output reports also generated
which contains the quantity, price, account, commission rate, Give
In & Full Service.There is one assumption for this stage and that is:
the Order is allocated and all required static data for markets &
trade data are configured in the Position Keeping & Settlement
System.
Test Scenarios -
We now have sufficient knowledge about the trade life cycle in
order to design test scenarios.
Scenarios for Order Indication
Let us start with Order indication. Order indication helps one to
finalize the trade details like, quantity, price at which you want to
buy / sell, with which broker you want to deal with, currency in
which you want to do settlement, option of Domestic or
International trading, date on which you want to book the trade and
so on. The tester creates scenarios based on following questions:
what should be trade date, what should be Settlement date, whats
the max one can buy or sell, what if we have not give unique
identifier of the security . So you need to validate all these fields
before placing your trade.
Business validation could be like
Trade date and settlement date should not be holiday or Weekend.
Quantity should be in number and not in decimals.
Settlement date should be T+3 for US
Security id (e.g ISIN, SEDOL) which is used should be correct.
Each trade should have unique reference so that there wont be any
duplication of trade.
And so on
Scenarios for Order Management and Trade Execution
Next thing is that once the order is placed you need to monitor the
different stages of the trade status like Initially it would be in New
then it will go into Auth (Authorized trade) but say if there is
anything which violates the business logic like by mistake you put
the trade date as Holiday or weekend then system has to validate
that and trade should go into Rejected status. Broker can change
this status by correcting the data and it will again move to next
step. Once the business data is validated trade will be sent to
settlement system depending upon the security and nature of the
trading like domestic or International. If everything is ok trade will
get booked and if not trade will get failed.
Now in this case what we need to verify is that if the trade got
booked properly then we need to verify that Actual amount is
calculated correctly or not like quantity * Price * Factor plus minus
commission.
Scenarios for Clearing and settlement:
Clearing and settlement are physical entities which take part into
trading cycle once trade got matched and confirmed. Let us discuss
how it work in real life so that you will get clear idea.
Clearing and settlement are the final two processes in trade
processing cycle. Before proceeding to clearing, all the participants
must have agreed to the trade details going through the above
mentioned processes.
Clearing:
This is a process of exchange of money and securities between
brokers using a form of netting. The clearing system nets all the
trades done by all the brokers throughout the day.
There are two forms of netting
Bilateral Netting This means arriving at net obligations (i.e.
netting) of securities and funds between two brokers / parties.
Multilateral Netting This means arriving at net obligations of
securities and funds between all the brokers. Thus at the end of the
day, exchanges arrive at a net position in securities or funds for
each broker.
Lets take example of Bilateral netting, say if Broker x is doing
trading with two clients as Client 1 and Client 2. Client 1 has got
position as 400 and Client 2 has got position as -200 so net position is
200 so Clearing system has to transfer theses 200 position on Brokers
account.
Clearing and settlement are physical entities and can not be
simulated into testing but say in case if there is any mismatch from
either client side or Broker side Clearing will not happen and trade
will get rejected and Final status of the trade would as FAIL. On
similar line settlement of cash would take place.
Settlement:
This is the last process in the Life Cycle of a Trade. In settlement all
the counterparties
Exchange securities and money as per their obligations.
Lets take example of Broker A (Buying broker) and Broker B (Selling
broker) wants to do the settlement so in this case NSCC (National
securities clearing corporation) and DTC (Depository trust company)
play vital role.
Broker A send instruction to Exchange for Buy order
Broker B send instruction to Exchange for Sell order
Exchange will send the Trade details to NSCC
NSCC send to Broker A details of all trades and net cash position and
securities position to be settled.
NSCC send to Broker B details of all trades and net cash position and
securities position to be settled
NSCC sends instructions to DTC with net securities position to be
settled
DTC transfers ownership of securities electronically from selling
brokers account to NSCC account and from their buying broker's
account
Funds are sent or received by broker's settleing bank's from DTC to
complete the settlement.
So in this way final settlement is done. This is definitely bit tricky to
test.
References -
History of Investment Banking
- Nanda, Delong and Roy
Merchant Banking: Past and Present:
- Valentine V. Craig